Saturday, October 21, 2017

Game Over – Claiming Supremacy

Italy’s best thrash band must have realized
they struck gold with their third record, “Crimes Against Humanity”, because
they’re back with another album just one year later. The prior album showed the
band taking considerable steps forward by diversifying their songwriting to
incorporate more technical elements alongside more mellow, ballad-esque
sections. It wasn’t a major left turn for Game Over, but it did show them
continuing to be creative within a somewhat predictable style of music. For
this reason, “Claiming Supremacy” is an important release for the band, as it
marks an opportunity for Game Over to vault themselves towards the top of the
thrash metal scene in 2017.

After a short intro, Game Over hits you
with their signature riffing style on “Two Steps In The Shadows”. One thing is
for sure: Game Over has no plans to sellout despite their increasing
popularity. For each of the first four full-length tracks, the band delivers
exactly what you’d expect of them. Each song fires riff after riff at you, only
letting up for catchy choruses (overladen with gang vocals) and occasional
melodic breaks. Game Over has always been more melodically inclined than many
of their peers, but they do so not at the expense of riffs, but to complement
them. “Blessed Are The Heretics” utilizes the most melody of these four tunes,
and is the lengthiest and most experimental of them as well.

The real problem with “Claiming Supremacy”
is most noticeable on “Last Before The End”, which was confusingly released as
the single. It contains all of the great tendencies noted above, but for some
reason, Reno’s vocals are absolutely buried in the mix. Not only is he
difficult to hear on this song, but the actual words seem muddy, making it
challenging to understand what he’s even saying most of the time. Both issues
seem like major production failures, which is disappointing given the
involvement of Joel Grind. A quick review of his history mixing/mastering
albums shows few bands with as clean of a sound as Game Over, so perhaps this
was just an ill-fated choice, but the outcome definitely weighs the album down.
It is worth pointing out that the remainder of the record doesn’t suffer as
badly from this problem, and that the YouTube pre-released version sounds worse
than the actual album, but the damage is nonetheless done.

Aside from this blip, the only other moment
of weakness on “Claiming Supremacy” is “Eleven”, which is a slow, boring track
with little to offer. It feels almost like an incoherent mess, with misguided leads and drumming that struggles to keep the beat. Reno tries his
hand at some unique vocals, but ultimately falls short. The track eventually speeds up a bit and does a serviceable job redeeming itself After this song,
however, Game Over returns to pummelling thrash efforts with no shortage of
riffs. Of the later tracks, “Show Me What You Got” stands out as being one of
the more classic Game Over numbers, and stands tall alongside the first half of
the record.

“Claiming Supremacy” is a very confusing
album for the band. It’s like they knew exactly what to do to make another brilliant
record, but struggled to execute it. Between the production snafus, and one
outlier song, it’s easy to be soured on this album. But looking beyond those
mistakes, there is still a lot to enjoy, and several of these songs are as good
as anything Game Over has ever done. So while the band certainly can’t claim
supremacy after this release, they have put together something fans should buy.
Given how easily fixable the missteps on this album are, Game Over maniacs
should still have plenty of hope for the future!